


And She Thawed

by Quick Burn (Sifl)



Series: It's Like Christmas Up In Here [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Not so sloppy makeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 17:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sifl/pseuds/Quick%20Burn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More or less an essay on the dynamic of Dave and Jade. Oh, and they kiss and stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And She Thawed

**Author's Note:**

> I'm kind of ashamed that I wrote this because it's so darned cheesy with the metaphors. But maybe someone else'll get enjoyment out of it.
> 
> Oh, and they are about twenty or something here, too.

The trees on her planet had been tall and dark and each tangled together by the roots and branches so that they looked like one continuous entity that spread over and under the alabaster expanse of the pristine snow piled within their tendrils. It was an exquisite monochromatic spread of near-black and white broken only by the bloody crimson blossoms that opened up in a unanimous cry for the attention of the frigid stars above.

It was ironic that the same imagery had also eerily described Dave in her arms when he had been dying (one of many times, truly, but only one of two times that it actually mattered to him); her ebony hair had draped over the white of his shirt and skin as his blood had slowly seeped out in pools beneath the icy air. Such gore was as much of an eyesore on his milky complexion as his rouged irises would have been if they had only stayed open (and devoid of his sunglasses) a moment longer to look beyond her dazzling gown and capture her bright green ones in a whisper of apology before the dark lenses of death inevitably covered them.  
This time, though, Dave found the same color motif poetic and he could hardly bring himself to feel any bitterness or unease about it when, before he knew it, his pale fingers had tangled themselves in the jungle of her hair (looking for all the world like frost on ashen bark)with the intent to bring her face closer to his so he could tell her, secretly, quietly, almost silently and in gentler tones he’d ever thought himself capable of, that he—

She pushed herself away from him and regarded him for a moment with a taciturn air before languidly sliding one set of icicle digits through his fair hair. The other set disentangled his hands (which were not cold, in fact, but smoldering, like coals burned to white remains) from her charred locks. He didn’t protest at her disengagement and let her limit him to simply having the lines on his wanting, heated palms traced with the pads of her own frozen fingers.

Jade was inviting and warm normally, but in moments of private intimacy she was aloof, distant, and unintentionally chilly like she never knew how to accept the deeper affection being given to her and so shut up her walls and adjusted the fireplaces within her heart to discourage passersby from staying too far in for too long. She loved visitors and treated them well, but if threatened, she banished them from the premises by any means necessary-her controlled and homey fires died out… and sprang back with a vengeance if need be while Dave acted in basically the opposite way.

He was usually cool, but not in the sense that he commonly allowed others to interpret coolness as; no, Dave discouraged entry and mercilessly froze anyone who dared get too close to him without his consent. When he was feeling especially volatile he would lace his ice of ire and irony with his flame in a deadly flash-freeze-burn. He flayed pushy, potential occupants because he knew that if he let them inside, he would become despondent if they left; he would risk being conquered and bound to serve his new ruler hand and foot. 

And, given his (skillfully bottled, but never completely controlled) passionate nature, he would prove to be quite double-edged as his adored master would unknowingly be assigned the fate of feeding, fanning, or controlling the fire when Dave himself was too burned out or too conflagrate to do it alone. If someone were to capture him and stay (he would do everything in his power to prevent the former and ensure the latter), they would be bound to help maintain him or chance being consumed by him.

Jade’s earthen mastery let her keep herself under control with relative ease while he was at the mercy of his unpredictability.

Her heart of hearts was nigh unattainable, frozen in plain sight at the center of an Eden paradise while his screamed and reached out from behind a nigh impenetrable barricade like a blazing flower on barren snow. 

And she would never let anyone break her heart off of its pedestal- it was hers to choose when and who to present it to for safekeeping when she was ready, much like his granting entry to his lonely furnace could not be forced. 

She was so close and yet so far away as her starry eyes continued to examine his lifelines in tandem with her gelid fingers. Eventually, he wound his grip around her hands and kissed them as if she was nobility and he her lowly soldier.

Her hands were so cold. He held them against either side of his neck to try and thaw them. 

If Jade were to tell you that she felt like she were being taken advantage of by Dave Strider, she would be lying. True, the events leading up to her meeting Dave for the first time had been the products of sheer manipulation, but the boy himself would do nothing so underhanded or inconsiderate- at least, not to her and not for sheer personal gain.

Anything he did was with her permission, spoken or otherwise, and although he liked to push his limits, the moment she called him on it he would step right back in line and wait, patiently, for whatever punishment or reward she bestowed upon him.

In one of her spur-of-the-moment psychology lessons, Rose had told Jade that girls frequently (and often unknowingly) were attracted to male figures that mimicked their fathers and Jade couldn’t help but find Dave’s behavior towards her to be much like that of Becquerel.

Jade did not know if a dog counted as her paternal figure by Freudian standards, but she found the loyalty and trust very familiar and familiarity in an alien world brought her unheard of levels of comfort. 

After all, she had spent most of her life alone on an island and while she was competent and confident enough to brave the depths of the wild natural jungle and emerge victorious, her routine had a simple set goal of surviving, existing, and following the instructions given to her in her dreams without any doubts while this new concrete jungle she found herself in after the game was full of doubt. There was no reliable harvest, no unoccupied space, and so many social customs and nuances beyond politeness and kindness and honesty and decency that had come natural to her (or embedded within her by her grandfather at a young age) that she could not learn through the use of technology or her interactions with the Prospitians. People were complex and she really couldn’t prepare herself for a continual onslaught of them without firsthand experience.

When she felt like she was suffocating from constant social overload, shoved around in crowds or engaged in fights at restaurants (like those with Karkat but without the undercurrent of goodness), she ran in a fury that she thought would lead her to some breathing room- perhaps she could calm down and talk to Rose- but instead found herself with Dave and his fortress of solitude.

She stormed around him in a confused huff and he, after a little warning barrage that was standard procedure for someone like him, decided she wasn’t a threat, opened the gates, and let her walk right on in. 

She appreciated the warmth that he gave off when he thawed his cool act and felt better about things quickly- life wasn’t so oppressive with him around, just like how his presence had solved her many crises during youthful war games. Dave was her safehouse, like always, but she didn’t want to overstay her welcome and thus never lingered long. 

Each time she got up and left almost as easily as she had come in, she remained unaware of how his face fell behind his eyewear and neglected to notice that the flames behind him began to burn an infinitesimal amount brighter. 

From within his furnace, though, he knew all too well what she did to him and so he surreptitiously sought her out, too.

These visits- both literal and figurative, heart-to-hearts, really- with one another became mutually frequent, with him strolling through the cooler parts of her garden to take the edge off his fury (and be just be close to her, if he were being honest, but he would always lightly tiptoe around her heart of hearts) and her curling up in the warmer rooms of his castle to ward off the frostbite that the world had threatened to let take hold of her that day.

Jade did not fully realize that he didn’t regard her occasional excursions into his more reserved feelings as casually as she did and Dave was not so depraved that he’d forcefully drag her inside and chain her to the scalding throne to be his queen. Instead, he left the gates open for her and tried to coax her into staying whenever he could. 

So, naively, she gave a small smile as he flattened her hands against his neck and rubbed small circles where her fingers rested, laughing a little when she felt him relax and exhale- she could tell that he had closed his eyes from behind his dark lenses. With a second light laugh, she made to move one set of fingers to ruffle his hair and stroke his face like she would Becquerel, but his hand, which had been encasing hers like a silk glove, gently guided her trajectory towards his sunglasses instead. At the urging of the light pressure of his fingers, she gripped the frames and lifted them away from his face, finally leaving them to rest on top of his head. 

He kept his eyes downward and moved her hand in the same direction, adjusting his own to cup around her fingers so he could kiss them again.

The warmth he left there lingered like a brand’s mark. 

She saw a fleeting splash of red dawn flash as he furtively looked up to monitor her reaction, but it set almost as soon as it rose and he placed another kiss on her hand immediately after, this one just below her wrist.

And another above it.

And third above that, and a fourth higher still and a fifth above her elbow and a sixth on her shoulder.

He was taking his time, but her mind was registering everything through a delayed filter- she was a little perplexed at his actions. Slowly, he slid her arm back around his neck and brought his hands around her waist to pull her closer before she had even thought to respond to him.

Finally, a squeak bubbled to the surface of her consciousness and she relocated her palms to his chest as the flames licked up her collarbone and neck (what number kisses they were, she had no idea- they’d all melted together to become one trailing blaze) and nervously absorbed the heatwaves radiating from his mouth to her ear.

At her soft protest, he halted. His face was buried in the side of her head and his expression was hidden, but his shoulders, now light from the lack of the weight of her arms upon them, slumped. Slowly, painfully, dutifully, he drew himself away from her.

Jade shivered once from the sudden disappearance of the source of the warmth that had been weaving itself in the ridges of her ear. Her insides, however, never stopped quivering when she found herself staring right into the startling blossoms of color of his eyes.

The ruby glint they exhibited alone was intimidating as it bellowed out its presence from among the faded palette of his skin, but the barely contained intensity churning within them was what truly surprised Jade.  
For all of his talk, Dave was not as chill and independent as he tried to be and his eyes spoke volumes about it.

He shut himself in with a barely contained fire that was started and fed by whatever stores of feeling he was unable to expel from himself without exposing himself as capable of them- wrath, sadness, fear, passion, desire, and love all swirled together in a chaotic mix of red upon red.

Yes, he was burning alive. To ask someone to try and help him control the fire wasn’t unthinkable, but few people did he trust enough to reign the flames in without exploiting him completely afterwards. Furthermore, he did not know how or who to ask.

He spent so long defending the spires of his offensive towers that he wasn’t sure he could risk inviting anyone in. 

Except her. She didn’t want to use him and she didn’t hate him for his spitfire and cutting blizzards of insults and she didn’t fear that he would burn down the garden she kept her heart in- she was one of only four who had faith in him and made him feel like he actually had a purpose in this world. And, of those four, she was the one he not only had the desire but ability to protect- she could bend the fire and give it somewhere to go- and that made her the only person he wanted to let in to stay.

Forever.

He was burning and through his eyes he was trying very, very hard to ask for her help before he incinerated himself. Attempting to tell her in words had been halted by her own command.

And there was more past his unspoken plea; Jade saw that, although he acted like one for her, Dave was not a dog. He was not a child anymore, either, as they had both been the last time he had been so vulnerable in her arms. He was a knight, yes, but that was an extra mantle placed upon him like a frame around a picture and not the true content.

She kept forgetting, or perhaps simply never understood that Dave was a man.

He deserved to be treated like one, too- a real one with flesh and blood needs and emotions. He was not just a puppet or toy knight for her to play with and expect to be able to put down and pick up at will with no consequences. Unwittingly, she had been jerking his hidden heart around from its place within the fortress- it was the source of his fires, after all- and it was leaping out of Dave’s hold like a rampant frog trying to escape confinement, casting embers everywhere and destroying all his cold walls.

He was falling apart without her, damned if he’d admit it.

Patiently and with all the restraint he could muster, he watched the stars in her eyes (eyes like her name, her name like music and the music was perfect) shine in the light and mimic the dance of the flare within him. 

He had not yet let go of her waist and she could practically see smoke rising from his fingertips as they singed her clothes. And she was so close that he could smell her, hear her breathing, almost taste her… she was so close that he was near tears. 

He needed her, but he also needed her to want him. That was paramount. 

For an agonizing eternity, he waited for her to make the next move.

When he finally felt her push him back, he let his hands slide lifelessly off her and closed his eyes to brace himself for the pyre awaiting him below. He succumbed to being left to the wildfire, helplessly on his back while she was once more an unreachable green sun.

He felt her green-glossed dark hair brush over him like the soft, whisking touch of charcoal branches and felt snowy fingers remove his sunglasses from his head- a chessboard motif of silicon on a dove’s wing- but his eyelids didn’t bloom accompanied by gasps of adoration until he felt her lips on his.

He wasted no time in wrapping his arms around her and pulling her down, sending cinders through the air as she collapsed into him.

Rapidly, she felt the temperature climb higher as it made him rise to her until he was sitting upright and her crossed legs encircled his waist like a ring of stones. Using his tongue, which seared her mouth in an unending series of kisses, and his body, which constantly swelled against her, he tipped her backwards in a hungry advance. She countered by shoving herself forwards to ground him again; plants were flammable and ice was meltable, but the underlying earth, while moveable, could not be demolished by the fire.

Besides, he needed her to ward off the bonfire that was destroying him rather than empower it. She could build him up later but he required dousing right now.

He choked a little and stole a short breath before simultaneously reclaiming her lips and tearing at her clothes with even greater fervor than before, if that were possible, accenting his movements by tight squeezes until she let out a small noise and lifted her chin.

She wasn’t sure, but she swore she heard him croon, “I love you” into her throat before planting his lips back on it and anything else he could reach.

The water trickling from her heart’s once-frozen pedestal paired with the warmed, tropical air would be best used nourishing the plants of her inner garden anyways, she figured.


End file.
